Poor thing I think Will anyone help her? and the first hook is in. Then I see that her home has been burned down, her people are dead, she’s still injured and she seems to be a child.

Her being badly injured wins my sympathy and soon classifies her as a victim of violence. My default assumption was that, as the narrator, she’s the hero, the one I should root for. The first step in the seduction was to tell the story from the vampires point of view and to tell it at a point where she’s badly hurt, vulnerable and has no memory of who or what she is. Now the book is done and I’ve had time to think beyond – hey, that was a pretty good vampire story – I’m left with two questions: how was the seduction done and why was the seduction done? Part of me was going, This council hearing scene is a little slow but I like the power dynamics only a very small voice at the back of my mind was saying over and over This is soooo wrong. Most of me was going – Wow, this is a great re-shaping of the vampire myth. It’s a mark of how effective the seduction was that, although I had recurring moments of feeling uncomfortable, I let them slide past because I was invested in the survival of the young vampire and was wrapped up in her trials and tribulations. From the first page, it nudged me to a view of the world where I accepted slavery as a lifestyle choice, I could see addiction as benign, I could see predators as protectors, I could accept men and women having sex with a vampire who is fifty-four but has the body of a ten-year-old as not just normal but almost wholesome and where I saw the good guys as the vampires who were conducting multi-generation, cross-species eugenics experiments to make vampires harder to kill. When you look back, you wonder how you could have moved so far away from your own values and how you could have gotten so used to something that would once have shocked you that you not only take it for granted but see it as something positive.

The seducer uses your assumptions, your hopes and your empathy to manipulate your emotions and slowly, step by step, get you to accept the world as they want you to see it. The thing about an effective seduction is that you don’t know it’s happening to you until it’s over.

The fledgling octavia